Does Blockage Correlation Matter in the Performance of mmWave Cellular Networks?

Abstract

Past literature on the analysis of mmWave cellular network’s performance in the presence of random blockages has assumed independent blocking of each link. In reality, a large blockage can block multiple links resulting in a correlation in blocking of these links. This paper focuses on deriving the impact of this correlation on the SINR performance of a mmWave cellular system. In particular, we consider the conditional probability of having line-of-sight (LoS) and non-LoS (NLoS) interferers conditioned on serving link being LOS or NLoS. We derive the distribution of the serving base-station (BS) distance from a typical user. We characterize the sum interference at the user by considering the correlation between blockage of serving and interfering links and derive the SINR coverage probability. Via numerical simulations, we show that including blockage correlation in the analysis is required in accurate characterization of the system performance, in particular when the blockages tend to be large.